Friday, March 16, 2012

NY Times Runs Anti-Catholic Ad, Not Anti-Islam Ad

The New York Times printed an ad from a Madison, Wisconsin-based atheist organization urging liberal and nominal Catholics to quit the Church, but when the Times was tested by a media watchdog with an ad suggesting the same to Muslims, the Times refused to print it.

“Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?”-- Asks the ad by the Freedom from Religion Foundation

. . . when Pamela Geller, a blogger and executive director of Stop Islamization of America, offered the same $39,000 for the Old Gray Lady to run an ad making a similar appeal to Muslims, the newspaper passed.

Geller said her anti-Shariah ad was designed to mimic the anti-Catholic one. In calling on Muslims to quit their religion, the ad asked “Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims … [do] you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims… Join those of us who put humanity above the vengeful, hateful and violent teachings of Islam’s ‘prophet.’”

Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy referred requests for comment to the letter the paper sent Geller when it declined to publish the ad.

"It is our belief that fallout from running this [anti-Islam] ad now could put US troops and civilians in the region in danger and we would like to avoid that."

The anti-Catholic ad was run without fear. . . . Although there was criticism over the nature of the ad, there were no threats of violence and no calls for crusades.

Meanwhile, Catholics have criticized the Times of promoting an anti-Catholic agenda. Bill Donahue, Catholic League president, said the Time's motivation to publish one article but not the other was the result of "either bigotry or fear and they've painted themselves into that corner."

Catholics do not have a history of attacking journalists, however militant Islamists do. At least two Muslims have been jailed for threatening media professionals and other journalists and authors have gone into hiding to avoid backlash for their criticizing Islam.

. . . Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com . . . created [the anti-Islam] ad in the same format, with the same message, only this one said, “It’s Time to Quit Islam.”

“The craven quislings at the New York Times rejected our ad,” Geller reported.

Then in an update, she said:

Bob Christie, senior vice president of corporate communications for the New York Times, just called me and advised me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”

So I said to Mr. Christie, “Isn’t this the very point of the ad? If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you’re part of the Catholic Church, you’re part of the problem.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church’s antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?